The Martial Unity

"Hehehe…" A wild grin emerged on Senior Zenshin's face. "Not so slick after all."

Rui had to admit that he had earned that boast. It was an incredibly powerful technique that did not send an attack traveling like how it was before. Instead, he had caused attacks to appear on their location.

That was incredibly impressive.

Of course, now that he had seen it, he had instantly figured out how it worked. It actually did not work by generating sharp shockwaves, instead, it worked on a principle of imbalance of pressure.

He generated a tremendous amount of pressure on a target with his breathing technique, then used his claw swipes to generate an extremely thin slit of vacuum amidst that pressure. The rest of the body of the target was experiencing immense pressure, pressure that had nowhere to go until he created a tiny slit of vacuum on his target's flesh with his claws, giving that vacuum a place to push through due to the zero pressure outside that area.

High external pressure was met with high internal pressure to maintain equilibrium, then that equilibrium was disturbed by a slit of vacuum with no pressure that was unable to hold back the high internal pressure.

Rui narrowed his eyes. 'He basically caused a huge imbalance of pressure inside and outside my flesh at one particular spot, causing the internal pressure to blast a hole open in my flesh from inside my body.'

To a certain extent, it bypassed his durability. It was quite the lethal attack and was much more of a sure hit than his normal claw attacks. He had most likely developed it as a solution against maneuvering experts like Rui, as a way to ensure that he got some hits on them.

Rui heaved a sigh as his wounds healed. No more than a few moments had passed in real-time as his wounds began healing at a decent pace. Thankfully, the very nature of the attack was such that it could not do more than inflict flesh wounds. It could not cause deep gashes that went beyond the flesh. Thus while he did experience a bit of blood loss, he was not in any grave danger.

His eyes narrowed as Senior Zenshin stirred ever so slightly, the predictive model foresaw yet another one of this very attack incoming.

WHOOSH

Rui surged forward, igniting the atmosphere with sheer speed. THWACK!

Rui interrupted the technique with a powerful Flowing Canon crashing into the man's guard. Yet Zenshin was hardly displeased by the interruption. 'You can't interrupt my technique without approaching me, within the range of my claws,' Senior Zenshin grinned.

Long-range techniques had greater range than close-range techniques, but they sacrificed power in exchange. They both knew that Rui's long range attacks did not have the power to throw Zenshin's technique off. After all, Senior Zenshin had withstood them even when Rui used Hypertrophic Surge, let alone without.

That meant that Rui needed to attack Senior Zenshin with Flowing Canon to stop that long-range wide-scale spinning technique. That would mean coming close to Senior Zenshin where he could be struck by the man's claws.

WHOOSH!

…SPLAT!

Rui barely avoided a lethal claw strike from Senior Zenshin, suffering a minor cut from the attack.

'I didn't even actually touch him!' Rui's eyes widened. 'Are his claws so sharp that they don't even need to make contact with the target to cut them?!'

Senior Zenshin's smile widened with bloodlust. His desire to shred Rui into ribbons with his claws was so palpable that one could almost taste it. "Hehehe…"

He took the stance for the technique once more as Rui's expression grew more grave. "What's the matter? I'm going to activate that technique again. Not going to stop me?"

Rui narrowed his eyes. 'Damn him, he's surprisingly not an idiot.'

Rui's wounds were still healing, his durability had weakened over the fight due to using Hypertrophic Surge, which fueled the growth of muscles by weakening all other parts of the body by the mechanics of the Reaper Dew poison.

He was smart enough to realize that Rui could not afford to take too many flesh wounds like he did before. "Here I go," The man's smile deepened, as he began spinning.

"Tsk," Rui raced forward with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walk. His fist surged forward.

BAM!

Rui's eyes widened as his attack crashed into the man's gut unguarded. He hadn't even bothered with defense, opting to take the heavy attack head-on. Instead, his claws had already been surging at Rui.

SPLAT!

"Rgh!" Rui grimaced as deeper cuts emerged on his body. He had been a bit too slow in his evasion, leaping back. "Damn…!"

There was only one saving grace. "Ngh…" Senior Zenshin grunted with an expression of pain.

Taking Rui's most powerful attack unguarded was something that not even Senior Zenshin could shrug off. In the first place, he was not a defense-oriented Martial Artist, of course, that did not mean his defense was bad, there was a solid amount of defense that came with his garngantuan figure.

That did not, however, allow him to take a Flowing Canon to the gut with no repercussions.

"Hahaha…" Senior Zenshin's expression grew excited with bloodlust. "Let's see who can survive longer."

The two of them quickly took their stances. Rui took a maneuvering stance that was inclined towards offense and linearity, resembling the starting crouch pose of a professional sprinter.

Senior Zenshin spread his arms, his torso coiled, ready to spin at any moment. The battle had entered a new phase, having evolved into a battle of attrition and timing. No longer did they blast each other with as many attacks as possible. No, instead, both sides focused on preserving energy and power while also focusing their efforts on nailing the timing of their respect maneuvers.

Senior Zenshin needed to land his Hurricane of One Thousand Claws twice in rapid succession, while Rui needed to disrupt the execution of the technique at all costs. Both Martial Senior stood, poised for action.